Tag Archives: Phoenix

Great For Winnipeg. A Disaster for the NHL.

Posted on May 20, 2011 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

The City of Winnipeg still waits for the announcement that will, in all certainty, arrive this coming week.  The Mayor and Premier both say it will come and the Toronto newspaper owned by the man who will purchase the team and give it to Winnipeg has already reported that the deal is done.

So as the city waits for the Atlanta Thrashers to arrive, it’s hard not to suspect that the National Hockey League has had its first domino drop.

Is this the end of the Great Southern Hockey Experiment? It easily could have ended in Phoenix and you have to figure Phoenix will still be the next to go. And, hey, it’s no picnic in Florida, Nashville or Columbus these days either.

Ponder this for a second:

A small city on the Canadian prairie – and Americans have every right to call it “the middle of nowhere” – is now more desirable a place for a National Hockey League franchise than the seventh largest television market in the United States.

That says so many things about (a) the bleak U.S. economy, (b) the game of hockey itself (c) the death of the non-traditional market experiment and (d) the simple economics of the game.

The NHL will leave a city that has almost 10 times as many people as its destination and plays in an arena that has 18,545 seats and the league will move it to a city that is only accessible directly by air on a regular schedule from two or three U.S. cities and has an arena with only 15,000 seats.

It’s moving from a $213 million arena built in 1999 to a $133 million arena built in 2004. It is such an incredible example of downsizing that it tells major financial and corporate leaders in the United States that the NHL is a dying industry. There are people in places in the Southern and Western United States who will never buy a ticket to a sporting event that involves a team from Winnipeg because those poor people have no idea what, let alone where, a Winnipeg is.

The owners in Atlanta say the team has lost $40 million a year for the last five years. That’s a questionable number, but it does say clearly that the owners in Atlanta have enough of their “dog” hockey franchise.

As a result, the NHL has now admitted defeat. When you take a franchise out of the seventh largest TV market in the United States and move it to a Canadian city with the same population as Des Moines, Iowa, you have given up. If I’m an American investor and I see you pulling out of cities of nearly six million to head off to cities in other countries with populations of 700,000, I wouldn’t put a plug nickel into your league. Hell, UFC has given no indication it would ever come to Winnipeg. NASCAR couldn’t find it on a map. MLB, NFL or NBA? Bwahahahaha.

The experiment is over. Because if the NHL can’t find an owner in Phoenix, can’t get a building built on Long Island, is losing $25 million a year in Columbus and $10-$15 million a year in Nashville, is a disaster in South Florida and can longer sellout in Dallas or Denver, it’s done. As dead as the Hartford Whalers. There aren’t enough stupid rich people in America left to buy these money-pit franchises.

And what’s going to happen when the NHLPA’s Donald Fehr starts to stare down Gary Bettman? The NBA and the NFL already have labour problems. Hockey is next.

I worry about the future of this league. The hockey is great. But in far too many markets, the business is a mess.

 

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Finally, A Mainstream Media Outlet Picks Up What Winnipeggers Have Known for Months.

Posted on March 29, 2010 by Scott Taylor| 1 Comment

We’ve been talking about it for months, the people of Winnipeg have been talking about it for months and the mainstream media has been saying, “Absolutely Untrue.”

Well, what started as a rumour in February has now been validated by the mainstream media. Not in Winnipeg, of course, but in Phoenix.

Could the Jets be coming back? Even Scott Brown, the director of communications for True North Sports and Entertainment, won’t deny it in the following story from Mike Sunnucks of the highly-regarded Phoenix Business Journal…

Monday, March 29, 2010, 10:11am MST

NHL talking to billionaire David Thomson about Phoenix Coyotes sale

Phoenix Business Journal – by Mike Sunnucks

The National Hockey League is working on a backup plan with Toronto billionaire David Thomson and Winnepeg-based True North Sports and Entertainment that could send the Phoenix Coyotes back to Canada if a deal with Ice Edge Holdings or Jerry Reinsdorf to keep the team in Arizona falls through.

Two sources with knowledge of the Coyotes finances and ownership said a deal between Thomson and the NHL has been completed in principle and could have the Coyotes back in Winnipeg next season if necessary. Thomson, also considered a possible buyer of the Atlanta Thrashers, is a partner in True North and chairman of Thomson Reuters. True North owns the Manitoba Moose of the American Hockey League and MTS Centre in Winnipeg, which seats 15,100.

The sources said, however, the NHL still wants to work out a deal to keep the Coyotes in the Phoenix market. The league bought the Coyotes, still in Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization, for $140 million in October fending off a $242 million bid by Research in Motion CEO Jim Balsillie, who wanted to move the team to Hamilton, Ontario.

League officials said during bankruptcy proceedings last year that if a deal could not be finalized by June 2010 it would be open to a sale that would involve a move from the team’s home in Glendale.

Scott Brown, communications director for True North Sports and the Manitoba Moose (who play in Winnipeg), declined comment.

“Due to the possible impact on both the Coyotes and our own AHL product here in Manitoba, we’ve actually been hesitant to engage in any discussion publicly about the situation in Phoenix as far back as last summer when rumors began to surface of the team’s possible departure. It is our understanding the NHL is working very hard to keep the team where it is in Phoenix,” Brown said.

Glendale city spokeswoman Julie Frisoni also declined comment as did NHL spokesman Kerry McGovern.

The NHL and Glendale are still working with Ice Edge Holdings to keep the team in Arizona with some games to be played in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, but there have been reports of financing challenges.

Ice Edge COO Daryl Jones said he optimistic about financing the Coyotes sale. “Ice Edge feels very comfortable with their financing. Our banks are very interested in this deal,” Jones said. He told a Toronto radio station recently, however, he wanted Glendale to move faster in getting a lease deal.

Glendale officials also have been talking to Chicago Bulls and White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf and his business partner John Kaites, who previously made a bid for the Coyotes.

The Coyotes have qualified for the NHL playoffs for the first time since 2002 and are seeing a late-season boost in attendance.

The Coyotes moved to Phoenix in 1996 from Winnipeg, where they played as the Winnipeg Jets. The franchise has lost more than $300 million since moving to the Valley and were put into Chapter 11 bankruptcy by former owner Jerry Moyes last year.

Check out more here: http://phoenix.bizjournals.com/phoenix/stories/2010/03/29/daily2.html

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Another Made Up Mainstream Media Rumour Forces Everyone into Denial.

Posted on October 5, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

Saturday night on Hockey Night in Canada, Al Strachan was at it again. Strachan told a breathless audience that “two Toronto businessmen are close to purchasing the Atlanta Thrashers so they can move them to Winnipeg.”

How many different ways can you say, “crock of crap?”

Strachan was once a big-time hockey writer with Sun Media. He had an inside line to agent Don Meehan and in order to keep that line free, he publicly promoted the demands of the NHL Players (read: Agents) Association. Far too much of Strachan’s scribbling wasn’t based in reality so it was not surprising when he cooked up this rumour.

Now to be fair, the sale of the Thrashers is not particularly far-fetched. The team is a complete disaster in Atlanta so why not sell it to somebody who can make the thing work. Canada is obviously the only place where big-time hockey can work and even though Canadian teams playing in the United States seem to be the scourge of American hockey marketers, it’s already been proven that six Canadian teams generate about 33 per cent of the NHL’s total revenue.  The NHL needs more Canadian-based teams, not fewer.

So, naturally, the Thrashers denied that the team was for sale and got rather testy when www.rivercitysportsblog.com asked if the team was being sold to “a couple of guys from Toronto,” who had plans to move it to Winnipeg.

“Completely false,” said Thrashers GM Don Waddell.

While it IS likely the Thrashers are for sale and eventually will be sold to new owners, who may or may not ask to re-locate the team, Atlanta is not the launching pad that will generate Winnipeg’s next NHL franchise.

The launching pad is still Phoenix. The Coyotes will probably lose upwards of $100 million this season. The Coyotes don’t play at home until Saturday night and et they’ve already started reducing ticket prices to $25 in the lower bowl. The NHL will soon take over ownership of this mess in the desert and you can bet they won’t be flushing money down that giant toilet for more than one year.

To their credit, the Thompson family from Osmington Inc. and Thompson Reuters, the people who own the majority of shares in True North Sports and Entertainment, have been working quietly and professionally to bring the NHL to Winnipeg. They will succeed.

But when you start believing the gibberish that is generated at Hockey Night in Canada, you will be stuck believing things that simply aren’t going to happen.

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Gary Bettman and the truth are strangers.

Posted on May 31, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

At his State of the League address in Detroit on Saturday, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman made a very big issue out of the fact he saved the Pittsburgh Penguins and planned to save the Phoenix Coyotes.

As all hockey fans know, the Penguins required bankruptcy protection (for a second time in franchise history) a decade ago but because the team eventually drafted Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin (after the Penguins once again faced financial difficulties in 2002) and because Mario Lemieux jumped into the ownership game (to make sure he was paid the $33 million he was owed), Pittsburgh was able to overcome its financial mess ($37.5 million in losses in 1998 and 1999) and remain a viable NHL member.

“Truth be told, it’s probably fair to say that the Pittsburgh Penguins – during their bankruptcy period – were in worse shape,” Bettman said on Saturday afternoon. “Because they didn’t even have at the time the prospect of a new building. And look at where they are today. …

“We didn’t walk out on Pittsburgh, we fought to fix their problems. We’re fighting for Phoenix because of our covenant with the team and the fans there.”

Yeah, just like he didn’t walk out on Winnipeg when he refused to even discuss the concept of a community-owned franchise (which he later allowed in Edmonton), publicly declared that there had to be one single owner approved by the NHL governors and then did everything in his power to move the team out of Winnipeg to any other stinking building in any other non-hockey community he could find.

Most journalists today like to write (for brevity’s sake, one suspects) that the Jets were simply moved to Phoenix in 1996, but that isn’t entirely true. The purchasers of the Jets, Dr. Richard Burke and Steven Gluckstern, wanted to move the team to  Minneapolis, but when they couldn’t cut a deal with the Target Centre, Bettman “arranged” to have the team move into Jerry Colangelo’s basketball building in downtown Phoenix, the one with the obstructed views at one end.

When Bettman says: “We didn’t walk out on Pittsburgh, we fought to fix their problems. We’re fighting for Phoenix because of our covenant with the team and the fans there,” he’s handing the journalists in attendance a lie and expecting those journalists to believe him without a challenge. Sadly, they did.

Gary Bettman did nothing for Winnipeg fans — or Quebec fans when the Nordiques moved to Colorado. He had no covenant in either of those markets. He likes to pick and choose his “covenants.” 

On Saturday, Gary Bettman and the truth were strangers.

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Bettman Uses Winnipeg as a Pawn in His Nasty Fight With Balsillie.

Posted on May 17, 2009 by Scott Taylor| 1 Comment

You knew the word “Winnipeg” had to turn up at some point.

National Hockey League commissioner Gary Bettman, in his ugly court battle with RIM CEO Jim Balsillie, a wealthy entrepreneur who wants to move the Phoenix Coyotes to Hamilton, filed an affidavit with the court in Phoenix suggesting the NHL would rather have a American-based team move to Winnipeg than Southern Ontario.

The news arrived in Canada on TSN yesterday and not long after I received a telephone call from Winnipeg mayor, Sam Katz.

“What do you think of Mr. Bettman’s proclamation?” the Mayor asked.

“I think it’s disingenuous,” I replied. “I think Bettman will use anything he can to win the war with Balsillie and make himself look good. I think he’s said something to make it seem like he cares about the NHL in Canada, but he doesn’t, and he’s just being the same guy who lied about ‘not being in control of the Coyotes’ for six months when he actually was in control.” 

Mayor Sam didn’t seem happy.

“All this is going to do is cause more grief and unnecessary heartache,” Katz said. “I think it would be great to have a team back, but we don’t have anyone with deep enough pockets to buy the team and then operate it in Winnipeg. And until we find an owner, there is no sense talking about it.”

The mayor, as usual, is absolutely right. We did have someone who was rich enough and smart enough to own a team, but Izzy Asper has passed on and that leaves no one.

Although some people would love to call the MTS Centre, “NHL-suitable,” it’s too small, the seats are too uncomfortable for the prices that would have to be charged, the press box is too small, there aren’t enough suites, parking revenues are a problem and no one is sure about the value (if any) of television revenue or corporate support. The fans are there, nobody doubts that, but what price will they pay to sit in an undersized arena is anyone’s guess.

An NHL team in Winnipeg would lose money, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. That’s because it’s very unlikely a team in Winnipeg would lose as much money as the teams are already losing in Florida, Atlanta, Tampa, Nashville, Long Island and Phoenix.

The return of the NHL to Winnipeg would be the right move by the NHL, but we all know the NHL isn’t full of “right moves” (What the hell IS Versus and why is there a team in Fort Lauderdale?). 

In the meantime, it’s pretty unfair to use this community as a pawn in an ongoing battle with an honest, well-meaning billionaire who wants to put a team in Hamilton.

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Super Bowl Week gets Duller: The Conversation is now Down to the Plight of the Lightning.

Posted on January 29, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

NFL Super Bowl Report No. 6, Thursday Jan. 29, 2009

 

TAMPA — Tomorrow night in Tampa, the Lightning will play host to the Philadelphia Flyers in a game that is expected to draw about 14,000 ticket buyers to the St. Pete Times Forum. It won’t. There will probably be 10,000 (maybe) in the building.

 

Still, that’s a lot better than Tuesday night of this week when maybe 8,000 showed up to watch the Lightning come from behind and beat Montreal 5-3. 

 

Of the 8,000 in the building, about 5,000 were wearing Canadiens jerseys. No wonder you can get an NHL ticket in this town for 10 bucks. There is nobody going to hockey down here. At least not at NHL rates they aren’t.

 

Super Bowl Week should have helped the NHL draw a big crowd here in Tampa. Instead, it’s done nothing to get people interested in a team that has won six-of-eight and is playing very intriguing hockey these days.

 

The NHL is in bigger trouble than we thought.

 

2) You know you’ve reached the point of “Dull Super Bowl Week” when the biggest story making the rounds is the one where Arizona wideout Larry Fitzgerald will happily restructure his contract to make it possible to keep teammate Anquan Boldin in Arizona for the long term.

 

The NFL controls the words and actions of these players so carefully, that if one of them said anything that could even remotely inspire the opposition, it would be news for a week. In fact, the biggest story here in Tampa this week has been how few people care about the Lightning. 

 

At least Celine Dion, Rihanna, Fall Out Boy, the Eagles and Randy Moss have arrived in town. Finally, got some real celebrities in this place. 

 

3) According to the NFL, despite the downturn in the economy, media from 28 countries will cover all the preparations and game – the most countries ever to be represented at a Super Bowl site.

 

Japan and Mexico have sent the most media organizations to Tampa Bay — 22 outlets apiece. Next comes Canada and the United Kingdom, which are sending 18 media outlets each to Super Bowl XLIII. Including Winnipeg’s own 92-CITI-FM.

 

There will be a total of 141 international media organizations in Tampa this year, compared to 116 for Super Bowl XLII in Arizona last year.

 

However, the number of media credentials issued for the Super Bowl is down for the first time, according to the NFL’s media department. In fact, the NFL said there were fewer requests.

 

Although there are more media outlets receiving credentials than ever before — 633 this year compared to 576 last year — the number of specific credentials requested dropped from 4,786 for last year’s game in Phoenix, Ariz., to 4,589 for Sunday’s game in Tampa.

 

It’s a brave new media world out there. In fact, as newspapers die a slow death, there are more internet sites at the game than ever before.

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Can ex-Steeler Whisenhunt Coax the Mediocre Cardinals to a Title?

Posted on January 24, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

NFL Super Bowl Report No. 1, Saturday, Jan. 24, 2009

TAMPA — Some thoughts from Day 1 on Florida’s remarkable West Coast:

 

1) So what’s the real reason for the incredible improvement of the Arizona Cardinals? Was it the re-invigorated play of the young-again Kurt Warner? Was it the brilliance of Larry Fitzgerald (who might be the best all-around athlete in the NFL)? Was it a defence that has come around during the past five weeks?

 

Yes and no. While all of those things had a lot to do with it, it is, ultimately, the coaching of Ken Whisenhunt. A former Steelers assistant who took the job in Arizona just as Pittsburgh was hiring Mike Tomlin, Whisenhunt brought along Pittsburgh assistant Russ Grimm to be his assistant head coach and another Steelers assistant, Kevin Spencer to run his special teams.

 

The Cards are now headed to their first Super Bowl. The Steelers are going for the seventh time in 43 years. Although he denies it, Whisenhunt has brought a little Steeler tradition to the desert.

 

2) Depending on where you go in Las Vegas, the Pittsburgh Steelers are either 6 ½ or seven-point favourites in next Sunday’s Super Bowl XLIII. Ask the Arizona Cardinals and that’s exactly what they want to hear. Let’s not pull any punches. This year the 9-7 Cardinals, a team that lost 35-14 at home a month ago to the less-than-brilliant Minnesota Vikings, were a mediocre football team that caught fire at exactly the right moment. 

 

According to Cards head coach Ken Whisenhunt, “I think that it’s not a surprise that we would be an underdog. This is a very good football team that we are going against; one that a number of the members of this organization are familiar with. Obviously, there will not be a lot of people singing our praises. Hopefully, that will keep us focused.”

 

The Cards might get as much energy from the oddsmakers as they get from Tampa’s abundance of strip clubs over the next week. 

 

3) Do uniform colours matter? Guess we’ll find out in Super Bowl XLIII. On Thursday, the Arizona Cardinals, the official home team in Tampa, chose to wear their home red uniforms in the big game. 

 

That means the Steelers will wear their white road uniforms, just as they did when they defeated Seattle for the NFL title three years ago in Detroit. In the 2006 Super Bowl, Pittsburgh had the option of wearing their black home jerseys, but decided to wear white after playing and winning three road playoff games in as many weeks.

 

This will be only the third time in their seven Super Bowls the Steelers have worn white. They’ve never lost in their white jerseys. 

 

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Some Thoughts From a Crazy Weekend of NFL Playoff Football…

Posted on January 12, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

A few thoughts from a weekend in front of the big new Sony Bravia HD…

 

(1) OK, so I’d make a lousy NFL owner. No question about it. I know, because, on Saturday afternoon, if I owned the Carolina Panthers, I’d have fired head coach John Fox at halftime.

 

Let’s be honest, five interceptions will cost any team any football game and Carolina QB Jake Delhomme did himself no favours by coughing up the football five times. However, had Fox been marginally prepared for the Cardinals, Delhomme would not have found himself in a position where he had to force so many second-half passes.

 

Fact is, the Panthers could still have beaten the Arizona Cardinals on Saturday WITH five Delhomme interceptions, if Fox and his staff thought it might be somewhat important to actually try to cover Arizona wideout Larry Fitzgerald.

 

Fitzgerald came into Saturday’s game as the leading receiver in the NFC (1,431 yards). He might be the best receiver in football. He’s not a secret. 

 

Meanwhile, his receiving partner Anquan Boldin was injured and not in the lineup. So suddenly, with one of the Cards’ two most important weapons out of the equation, Carolina still forgot that Fitzgerald was playing. The Panthers allowed Fitzgerald to catch eight passes — six in the first half — for 161 yards and a second-quarter touchdown. Had Carolina shut down Fitzgerald before halftime, they’d have shut down the Cardinals. 

 

I hope this doesn’t sound presumptuous, but why didn’t Fox think of that?

 

(2) Evidently, in the National Football Conference, the 17-week regular season doesn’t mean very much. This coming Sunday a 9-6-1 team will journey to the home of a 9-7 team to play for the NFC title.

 

That’s right. It will be the 9-6-1 Philadelphia Eagles against the 9-7 Arizona Cardinals in the NFC championship game and the team hosting the game, the Cards, lost 35-14 at home to the Minnesota Vikings less than a month ago.

 

In a league where four injury reports are published every week just to keep the gamblers happy, it has now become painfully obvious the only reason the NFL’s regular season exists is for the benefit of the gamblers. 

 

After all, when an 11-5 team misses the playoffs and a 9-7 team could win the Super Bowl, the integrity of the schedule comes into question and right now, it would appear the only reason they bother to play a regular season is so you and I can bet on it.

 

(3) Why is it that people hate Minnesota Vikings QB Tarvaris Jackson so much? Seems everyone from Vikings head coach Brad Childress to the entire Minnesota media corps wants the Vikings to find a way to make it appear as if ol’ T-Jack never existed.

 

Which brings up the following question: “Because T-Jack had no support whatsoever from his offensive line in a 26-14 playoff loss to the Eagles two weeks ago, is he any worse at playing quarterback than Eli Manning — who had some support at home this past week and lost 23-11? With no help from his Hawgs, T-Jack DID put up more points against that Eagles defence than L’il Manning.

 

Just asking.

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